BTW...
A Hint for the Rapidly Aging and Eyesight Challenged Competitive Handgun Shooter
- Pick up one of your handguns with a 4" barrel (not too long, not too short).
- Hold it in your normal shooting stance.
- Have a friend measure and record the distance from your dominant eye to the front sight (e.g., something like 26.5 inches).
- Get your eye exam.
- After the optometrist records your near and far distances and all the astigmatic-presbyopic stuff that goes with it, ask if he/she will also record a value for your dominant eye out to the distance your friend previously noted for you; likely to cost you nothing, or at least very little, for the extra two minutes of time.
- Ask the optometrist if he/she can also record your pupillary distance (PD); a vital measurement. Many don't; they leave that up to the dispensing optician. But if you can get it now, it will allow you the option of online ordering...which can be much cheaper, for example http://www.zennioptical.com/; I have three of theirs and have been satisfied...at costs of up to 300% less than local brick-and-mortar.
- Go to your selected dispensing optician and ask for single-vision glasses with the dominant eye in the "special" value, and the non-dominant in your regular full-distance prescription.
- Make certain you get UV coating and polycarbonate lenses that are shatter resistant; pretty de rigueur nowadays. Frame style and tint at will.
- Put on your new glasses about five to 10 minutes before you plan to shoot. Takes your eyes--well, your brain--a short while to adjust, but adjust they (it) do (does).
A good solution for EDC practical situations? Not at all. For that, I practice positive target identification, then looking over the top of my every-day glasses, accept the fuzzy front sight and even fuzzier target, fire, then look through the glasses again. Kinda like low-light drills with a flashlight.
However, you
can adapt to the seemingly bizarre prescription and function with it every day. I've forgotten my regular glasses before, and operated just fine driving, shooting, signing cards (looked over the glasses to do that) having a social lunch, and driving back home. Your brain adjusts...to a lesser degree of requirement than those experiments where researchers give subjects glasses that invert the image and, after a short while, the poor experimental subjects can function normally even though everything is being sent to their eyes upside down.
But if your near/far eyesight has been cranked by age, the experience of wearing the right prescription while pushing out a handgun with iron sights for the first time is almost breathtaking. You're seeing the field like an 18-year-old with 20/15 vision...and one who knows how to interpret that field. The front sight is absolute crystal and is the most dominant thing in your FOV, while at the same time everything at distance is as crisp and sharp as you'd expect and you can switch back and forth with the instant clarity of...well, of an 18-year-old with 20/15 vision.
Also works well with focused scopes, natch. Even a holographic sight (e.g., EOTech) works well because, even though the dominant eye is fuzzying the red-dot and beyond, the non-dominant eye is compensating and sharpening the environment.
A special note that Andy is well aware of, but I'm just throwing it out for general information. When asked by your optician,
always skip polarized lenses .
The purpose of polarization is to help prevent reflections. Nice if you're going fishing. Not so nice if you're flying an airplane, driving a car that has a heads-up display, or shooting a holographic sight. As early as 2009, it was found that wearing polarized glasses while using holographic sights caused the red-dot to disappear in all but about 60% of the ocular range.
One of the foremost optics manufacturers recommends:
ZEISS Group wrote:
Important: why pilots should avoid polarization filters for their glasses
Sunglasses or prescription eyeglass lenses with polarization filters are not suitable for most pilots. Such filters normally provide protection against reflections, but pilots should always avoid them, as the special structure of many cockpit screens combined with the effect of polarizing lenses can quickly impair a pilot's vision, occasionally preventing the pilot from noticing certain signals at all. In certain weather conditions, some aircraft can be difficult to visibly detect, or only recognizable by the sunlight reflecting off their outer shell. If this reflection is blocked by an additional polarization filter in their glasses, the pilot may not see the other aircraft at all, which presents a hazardous situation. Also, depending on the position of the pilot's head, LCD displays (instruments, navigation devices, etc.) may be impossible to read through such lenses, or may be perceived simply as black surfaces.
I will now go back to designing my patent-pending eyeglasses with flip-up lenses that will allow a shooter on-demand perfect vision at all distances.
And before all you bergs beat me to it:
